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Clarissa & Septimus

 At the end of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway escapes to a dark and quiet room after hearing of a young man’s death, who we know to be Septimus Smith. In Woolf’s original notes for the novel, Clarissa was going to take her own life at the end of the novel. Through the process of writing Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf decided to add in Septimus, “the artist”, who would commit suicide instead of Clarissa. Though this piece of Clarissa has been separated, her and Septimus still seem to share an unusual bond, with Clarissa perfectly visualizing how Smith had died hours earlier, even though she knew nothing about his death. After this visualization Clarissa has, the reader never enters her mind again for the last pages of the novel. I think it is fully possible that in this moment, Clarissa also commits suicide.  Although the last sentence of the book ends with Peter Walsh thinking “For there she was,” this could be read as a concluding statement to Peter’s musing on wha...
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Howie's Childish Wish for Maturity

Throughout Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, Howie explores different topics that catch his fascination throughout his life, and lunch break. A topic he returns to frequently is how he wishes to be seen as more grown up/mature. This first crops up when he buys milk and cookies as a snack during his lunch break. He sees eating and enjoying his milk and cookies as something very childish, and something he should have outgrown by now. He also spends part of his lunch break calculating how many years of “child” thoughts he’s had throughout his life, and subsequently, how many “adult” thoughts he will have to have in order to outweigh them.  Although Howie’s thoughts return to his maturity, and how grown up he presents himself outwardly, as readers we can see into the inner workings of his mind. Inside, he is filled with curiosity on how things work, routinely finding things “interesting” (his favorite word). This fascination, to me, is extraordinarily childish. I think that as a child, ...
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